Monday, December 11, 2006

Group Profile: Wahneema's World

In the months since Houston Baker departed Durham for Vanderbilt, a race to the bottom has occurred among the Duke faculty to determine which ideologue can behave in the most irresponsible manner. Three finalists for this dubious honor:

Peter Wood, who has gone out of his way to appear to slander his own students;

Karla Holloway, who has proclaimed that “white innocence means black guilt,” while boasting she would sign the Group of 88’s statement again “in a heartbeat”;

Wahneema Lubiano, who coordinated the Group of 88’s statement.

Lubiano’s career provides a glimpse of the kind of professor Duke’s humanities and (some) social sciences departments have desired in recent years. Though possessing a Ph.D. in Literature from a quality institution (Stanford), Lubiano has compiled a thin scholarly record while blurring the lines between her job and political activism. Her irresponsible approach to the lacrosse case only represented a continuation of a pattern evident since her arrival at Duke.

Books

Lubiano, who received her Ph.D. in 1987 and is a tenured associate professor at Duke, has edited one book. The volume contained papers from high-profile African-American authors presented at a mid-1990s conference at Princeton, where she then taught.

In the 19 years since she received her Ph.D., however, she has not published a scholarly monograph. Yet those who relied solely on Lubiano’s word for her publication record might have believed otherwise. The Black Cultural Studies webpage states that a Lubiano manuscript entitled Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor: “Deep Cover” and Other “Black” Fictions was forthcoming from Duke University Press—in 1997. Yet the current Duke University Press webpage, nearly a decade after Lubiano listed the book as poised to appear, contains no listing of Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor.

On Lubiano’s official Duke webpage, which was “last modified” on November 17, 2006, Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor is listed as forthcoming—in March 2003. (This time, she doesn’t reveal the press that allegedly was going to publish the book.) Yet a search through amazon.com, the Library of Congress website, and Duke’s own library catalog contains no evidence that the book ever appeared—45 months after Lubiano listed it as forthcoming.

I would have asked Lubiano whether an innocent explanation existed for her having twice listed as “forthcoming” a manuscript that apparently had not even been accepted for publication. But she earlier had instructed me (when I requested evidence for her transparently absurd claim that the Brodhead administration showed favoritism to the lacrosse players), “Do not email me again. I am putting your name and email address in my filter.”

Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor isn’t the only manuscript for which Lubiano has “flexibly” interpreted “forthcoming,” a description usually reserved for manuscripts that a press has accepted for publication. The BSC webpage from 1997 lists a volume called Messing with the Machine: Politics, Form, and African-American Fiction as “forthcoming” (no date supplied) from New York’s Verso Press, which bills itself as the “largest English-language radical publisher in the world.” Yet Verso’s catalog contains no trace of Messing with the Machine. And Lubiano’s official Duke webpage, revised only a couple of weeks ago, claims that Messing with the Machine was “forthcoming” as of March 2003—or 45 months ago.

On yet a third occasion, Lubiano listed both books as “forthcoming”—in 1999.

In the most charitable interpretation possible, Lubiano has offered misleading claims, which exaggerated the extent of her publishing record.

Some might consider it hypocritical for a professor with such a record to lecture anyone, much less her own institution’s students, about the canons of ethical personal behavior.

Essays

Lubiano’s current record of scholarly publications thus is confined to essays, most of which have appeared as chapters in books edited by others. (In contrast to journal articles, book chapters usually are solicited and do not go through a peer-review process.) Lubiano’s essay titles include:

“Shuckin’ Off the African-American Native Other: What’s Po-Mo Got to Do with It?”;

“To Take Dancing Seriously Is to Redo Politics”;

“Standing in for the State: Black Nationalism and ‘Writing’ the Black Subject.”

Lubiano has labeled herself a “post-structuralist teacher-critic leftist.”Recurring themes from her work include:

Hostility to the Western intellectual tradition. “Western rationality’s hegemony,” she complained in one essay, “marginalizes other ways of thinking about the world.” This tradition includes concern with “the limits of Western science and rationality in accounting for the nexus of pleasure, ritual, history, and political significance.” Along these lines, Lubiano has celebrated the Ebonics movement—or the “deconstructive relation to the dominant language whether by using the dialect and syntactical structure of ‘black English’ or by subverting standard English dialect.”

Victimization. Like her African-American Studies colleague Karla Holloway, Lubiano sees herself as a victim. In a 1996 essay, she described herself as “at the mercy of racist, sexist, heterosexist, and global capitalist constructions of the meaning of skin color on a daily basis.” As someone who is “attacked by the gemeonic social formation’s notions of racial being and the way those notions position me in the world,” she is “physically traumatized and psychologically assaulted . . . in the dark of a power that never admits to its own existence.” Indeed, she wildly hypothesized, “Many whites . . . might not ever be persuaded by appeals to reason, to what we ‘know’ and agree to be ‘truth’—that all men/women were created equal, for example.” I suspect that few people would consider a tenured professor who teaches four courses annually at an elite university to be a victim of society.

“Boundary stretching.” Lubiano frequently has boasted that her work and work that she supports offers dramatically new intellectual insights. “There are moments,” said she, “of epistemological excitement that recognize changes already ongoing, and then there are moments that at the same time both recognize and generate new ways of knowing. The creation of Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology is such a moment.” One example of boundary stretching came in her work on black drill teams, which she fantastically described as “an incredibly cathected performance of anti-racist theory, counter-military aesthetics, group creativity, and certain kinds of aesthetic appropriations and reappropriations.”

Anti-capitalism. Lubiano has asserted that the United States is oriented around a “prison economy” (or “a capital investment project that rests on the particular manipulation of a group of people”) that disproportionately has affected Black (she always capitalizes Black and never capitalizes white) males—who often have been punished because of their participation in what she delicately labeled “illegal alternate economic activities.” (A little like alternative energy sources, I guess.) Imprisonment, she argued, allows the American state to impose on black men its cultural values, namely a “warrior ethos, with its attendant homophobia and patriarchalism.”

The Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald, who attended a conference at which Lubiano spoke, recalled the atmosphere:

The final impression left by the conference had less to do with the substance of the debate about the “academic culture wars,” numbingly familiar as it is, than with its style. After hours of being bombarded with impenetrable syntax and utterly predictable slogans, one stumbled out of the conference hall profoundly depressed by the state of academic speech.

Teaching

Lubiano has an unusual approach to her job as a professor: “University intellectuals,” in her words, “work in knowledge factories; that the factories produce engines of dominance; and that, therefore, sabotage has to be the order of the day.” She views her job as engaging in “a deliberate attempt on the part of the historically marginalized to reconstitute not simply particular curricula, but the academy itself.” Is this what parents who spend more than $40,000 a year to send their children to Duke had in mind?

Lubiano has to teach something, though her course offerings are vague enough to allow a presentist focus where she can spend a term teaching her beliefs—such as her conviction that “once white working class people learn that corporate capitalism is using racism to manipulate them, they will want to join with racially oppressed people against capitalism.” In spring 2006, for instance, her two classes were “Introduction to Critical U.S. Studies” and “Teaching Race/Teaching Gender.” Syllabi for these offerings are not available on-line; and, of course, Lubiano refused to supply them—but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out what sort of issues the classes address.

Lubiano considers herself entitled to use her job to advance her political agenda. “Whether I’m thinking, teaching, or engaging in politics (including strategizing),” she wrote, “I think that it is part of my privilege, my work, and my pleasure to insist that those three activities are not clearly demarcated.” [emphasis added] This approach is justified, she wrote, because “over the past 250 years, university scholars have created and legitimated the knowledge that has justified the particular oppression” she has devoted her career toward exposing.

Lubiano’s vision of an ideal university is especially troubling. At a 1990s conference held at HunterCollege, she declared that it was impossible “to draw whites into” the project of “strong multiculturalism,” since “white males are right not to feel good about it.” As Lubiano hopes to see all universities oriented around a “strong multiculturalism,” it would appear that whites—and especially white males—have no place in the higher education that the Duke professor desires. Imagine the appropriate outrage if a tenured professor wrote the same thing about her institution’s Asian-American or Hispanic students.

Ideological Crusades

So exactly what “politics” has Lubiano used Duke’s dime to promote? Before the lacrosse case, she bounced from one extremist ideological crusade to another—as if intent on providing a caricature of what New York’s Kurt Andersen termed the academy’s “loopy left.”

She opposed the war in Afghanistan, urging instead a “just peace” based on “dismantling the unquestioned commonsense of capitalism, and dismantling the unquestioned commonsense of market religiosity.”

She advocated reparations for African-Americans, citing “activity of the state in the aid of theft” of free labor from slaves.

She participated in DRAGnet (Duke Radical Action Group), which, according to the Chronicle, featured professors “running around campus dressed from head to toe like drag queens” performing political skits.

She opposed increased campus security measures, lest Duke “produce students as the future gated community citizens of the nation and the world.”

She demanded that Duke divest from companies doing business in Israel.

She was closing speaker at a 2001 conference called “Black Queer Studies in the Millennium.”

She petitionedNew YorkUniversity to recognize a graduate student union.

She deemed the government’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina “cover for other forms of class warfare on the part of the powerful and cover for the work of dismantling, one disaster or crisis at a time if necessary,” the welfare state.

In many ways, Lubiano resembled Nifong—a rogue in her profession, though a basically harmless figure who escaped notice of the outside world. But then, like Nifong, she couldn’t resist exploiting the lacrosse case, even if, by so doing, she risked bringing attention to her somewhat unusual scholarly and ideological background.

In March, she put together the Group of 88’s statement, fully aware, as ESPN reported, that “some would see the ad as a stake through the collective heart of the lacrosse team.”

In April, she deemed the players “almost perfect offenders . . . the exemplars of the upper end of the class hierarchy, the politically dominant race and ethnicity, the dominant gender, the dominant sexuality, and the dominant social group on campus,” and promised to press forward “regardless of the ‘truth’ established in whatever period of time about the incident at the house on N. Buchanan Blvd.”

After the arrests of Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, the N&Oreported that Lubiano told them “people can’t imagine that the woman could have made a false rape allegation.”

In May, she penned an op-ed for the N&O declaring that Duke needed immediately to begin “targeted teaching” to expose “the structures of racism and the not-so-hidden injuries of class entitlement in place at Duke and everywhere in this country, and without regard to banal and ordinary sexual harassment,” since “we don’t have to wait for working class or poorer students to be targeted by fraternity ‘theme’ parties or cross burnings on the quad or in dorm halls, or for sexual assaults to be attested by perfectly placed witnesses and indisputable evidence.”

The silence of most Duke professors has allowed Wahneema Lubiano and like-minded colleagues to monopolize the faculty’s public response to the lacrosse affair. Such an outcome should embarrass the institution.

Tomorrow: Through what kind of process do professors like Lubiano get hired?

This professor was hired and tenured because of her race. She may have been provided her education because of her race as well. She seems to have done well within capitalist America despite her race. That's bad enough, but when she published false information about forthcoming books, she proved that she is not deserving of her position. She should be removed. What a joke.

The simplest explanation for the pathetic level of productivity for this individual is laziness. Indeed, the ideology she espouses basically endorses the notion that a hard, objective world outside her personal/tribal perspective is never worth the effort to get to know. Especially after having tenure. (That event is beyond depressing. Affirmative action gone wild?) I cannot think of a worse philosophy for someone who is given the job of teaching.

Talked to a law professor at UNC-CH a while ago in a social setting and he volunteered that most of his black students who are admitted should not be there.

He lamented the inability of some of them to string a sentence together. Privately, he hates this quota and affirmative action system because it undermines serious teaching. He feels that he has to go slower and over-explain all the time.

He said it works like this: The students admitted to places like Harvard Law School are really acdemically worthy of going to UNC-CH, and the students admitted to UNC-CH should be at a third or fourth tier law school like NCCU.

That's how affirmative action works in academia. Everything is pushed up a notch to where the students are really out of their league.

Then they spend the rest of their lives like Lubiano, thinking they are "intellectuals" and expecting everything to be easy.

As the law professor lamented: "They don't know what they don't know. Then they blame everyone else when they can't measure up and aren't hired out in the real world."

The tenure system has advantages and disadvantages. It allows people to explore topics they might not be able to otherwise because it does not directly accomplish the desires of the department or the university. Or its payoff or process is a little risky.

Sometimes this security allows great works or services. KC, would you be writing this blog with such vim if you did not yet have tenure?

In other cases, people become lazy or act radical. Sometimes they have seemingly great ideas or attempts to help which fail, sometimes fail miserably. Wahneema may be such a case.

But if we try to silence people with tenure, or rebuke them, then you also may silence people like KC and a lot of creative, but risky scientific research.

Asking the university to fire (or even just queit) these people is a little ludricrous. That said, the tenure process should hopefully sort out the bad apples ahead of time, but its not easy.

KC - I am a Rn with a BS. In retirement,I read constantly. I cannot understand one sentance that women writes. I understand you completely and look forward to your writing. I wonder if the gang is saying" all I did was sign a paper and now my entire life is being exposed."

For all white liberal males out there (e.g. broadhead, and even Nifong), I wonder how they react to Lubiano's comment that white males shouldn't like the multi-cultural bend on issues.

Like I've said before, this case is about race and these liberal whites who push this garbage should rethink whether at the end of the day it makes any sense to cede any power at all to a minority group.

I'm unusually excited to read tomorrows post. This post on Lubano’s academic direction jarringly resembles Brooklyn Colleges own Professor Priya Parmar and her insistence on maligning the United States and white males.

Well, what can we say? Just as Prof. Lubiano and her friends deemed the LAX players the "perfect defendants" because they seem to represent everything she despises, Ms. Lubiano makes the perfect poster prof for those advocating a core curriculum. Plus,incontrovertible evidence of her own creation backs up the claim. One suspects that despite her impressive degrees she actually has little idea what she is promoting--a few economics courses might do her some good. Alternately, an extended stay in an environment where she feels more comfortable could be enlightening as well. How about teaching some courses in African languages, history, geography, politics and economic systems? How about digging in and working to improve conditions there? The heart of the academic culture wars IS mindnumbingly boring after awhile. No wonder people like Prof. Lubiano start waxing obtusely in convoluted syntax. Then, sorting out meaning becomes an exercise that at least engages the brain.

Has anyone had the heart to tell Lubiano that her infamous 88 statement has a spelling mistake in it? Or was the typo an intentional stand against the heterosexed capitalistic forces that are keeping her down, man?

JC, It has been discussed here that the Wilson Glater article in the NYT on Aug. 25 stated the accuser was diagnosed as bipolar. I have not reread the article to confirm. And no one seems to have concrete evidence about the reason for her discharge, which was neither honorable nor dischonorable, but some have offered that a plain discharge is often the result of health issues--which could include mental health issues. Also, when discharged, she was expecting the child of a fellow member of the Navy, not her husband--a situation heavily frowned upon in the Navy.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment, I’m a true believer that you don’t need a stellar publishing record to be a truly excellent teacher. Looking back on my own experiences, the best professor (and honestly, the best teacher) I ever had was a nearly retired law professor who hadn’t published anything groundbreaking in years. Nevertheless, he was exceptional in the classroom. He’d won the excellence in teaching award more than any other professor in the history of the school. He was famous for memorizing the face book each year and knowing each student in his classes by name on the first day. His door was always open and he embraced the job of mentoring students and young faculty. Not surprisingly, students and alumni love him and he remains an incredible fundraiser for the school (If he called me today, I’d get out my checkbook without hesitation).

Another excellent teacher was an African-American law professor, who’d graduated number one in her class at big public law school and had practiced for a number of years before joining the faculty. She’d published a fair number of articles in the law journals of respectable schools like Emory and Indiana, but the names Harvard, Yale, or Stanford weren’t anywhere on her CV. But like the professor I described above, she was great in the classroom and showed exceptional interest in her students. She also worked extensively with our legal clinics, where the practical knowledge she’d picked up during her time as an practitioner was invaluable. She was one of those professors who posted office hours but kept an open door and always made time if you needed to talk. If she never published again, I’d still fully support her tenure on the faculty.

On the flip side, I took several classes with a law professor who was absolutely eminent in his field. He authored the definitive treatise in his subject area (and several other books), edited one of the three major case books in his subject and regularly published in the country’s most respected law journals. But with all that said, he wasn’t a great teacher. He was always well prepared and obviously took his job as a teacher seriously, but had a style that inevitably left his students bleary-eyed and lost at the end of class. We were fortunate to have him on the faculty, but I tried to avoid his courses if I could.

My point is that good professors come in a lot of different molds and can’t always be judged on publishing resume alone. So while I’m as offended by some of Lubiano's comments as everyone else, I’d rather let those actions stand on their own than call for a purge of all faculty members lacking resumes “fit for Duke.”

When I was in law school, I took a class from one of these left-wing whackos.

I'll never forget that one day she told us that the Uniform Commercial Code provides different remedies for buyers and sellers of goods, so why can't the law provide different remedies for blacks and whites? (Presumably she wanted more favorable treatment for blacks)

To me, what is probably most offensive about Professor Lubiano is her apparent capitalization of "black" but not "white." Guess where I have seen the reverse of this? On neo-nazi web sites.

I won't be back at Duke until early January, but I was shocked to read that the white supremacist, KC Johnson, would rape my scholarship with his evil Johnson. How dare he? He has no idea what it's like to go toe to toe with a sistah.

The capitalization of "Black" but not "white" is a pathetic attempt by black racists to boost their own self-esteem while denigrating whites. As someone mentioned, it's done in reverse by white racists too.

Of course it's harmless, that's not in dispute. It's utterly silly. But just the fact that an individual even bothers to do this is indicative of their peculiar sense of priority, not to mention their shallow intellect.

To answer Huesofblue, Duke primarily is known as a research institution. That means that people who are tenured and promoted must publish in reputable journals.

I understand the teaching part, and that is why there are liberal arts colleges that emphasize teaching over publications. Now, we can talk of the unfairness of it, but I can guarantee you that for someone to be tenured in something like chemistry or economics, one must publish in top-rated journals and have a strong academic reputation.

Lubiano's work definitely does not meet the standards you would see in other departments. Now, if Duke wishes to advertise itself as a "teaching" institution, then in order to be fair, it would have to apply the Lubiano standards to other departments.

A number of these class/race/gender departments sprang up as a result of white male guilt that was brought to the fore in the 1960s. Of course, these new "professions" also meant new journals, but by any objective standard, they are not up to the same levels that journals in established fields might be.

Also, these new departments came about because of activism, and professors in those departments are more likely to run to the barricades than chemistry or physics professors. Thus, they always will be "out front" at the academy.

One thing I find is that Lubiano and her colleagues are well-paid, have jobs that really do not require much from them -- and they are perpetually angry, miserable, and trying to make everyone else around them miserable. That is most telling of all.

I think she was bragging that she travels to Manhattan and like lattes at Starbucks. Being a white supremacist yourself, you thind everyone should be "in" on the secret knowledge of Starbucks' ubiquity.

I find many of your remarks as bigoted as the trolls we have here from time to time.

Whatever negative can be said about Obama - too liberal, too inexperienced now for higher office - he is no dummy. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia on his career:

"After high school, Obama studied for two years at Occidental College, before transferring to Columbia University. Upon graduating in 1983, Obama worked for one year at Business International Corporation before moving to Chicago and taking a job with a non-profit organization helping local churches organize job training programs for residents of poor neighborhoods.Obama then left Chicago for Harvard Law School. He was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. On returning to Chicago, Obama supported a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his federal election.In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate.In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Rush, a former Black Panther and community activist, charged that Obama had not "been around the first congressional district long enough to really see what's going on". Rush received 61% of the vote, while Obama received 30%.In his subsequent campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama won the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, whose officials cited his "longtime support of gun control measures and his willingness to negotiate compromises", this despite his support for some bills that the police union had opposed."`

I haven't read his book yet, but I have read several articles on him, and not all of them idolatory. To include him in this discussion speaks of a deeper prejudice. Is there any black or mixed race person in public life, other than an athlete or entertainer, whom you admire?

I'm someone who takes great pride in my teaching, and that's an important part of the tenure process. It appears, however, that Lubiano was hired with tenure (she came to Duke in 1997, 10 years out from her Ph.D.: it's rare that someone would move at that point in their career without tenure). So whatever Duke was evaluating her on, dealing with Duke students wasn't a component--she was hired on the basis of what existed of her scholarship.

to duke 09:

Tomorrow's post deals with some of the structural aspects of the personnel process. A main problem in the humanities and social sciences is the utter subjectivity of the process: in effect, to get tenure in, say, African-American Studies means that good scholarship is whatever the AAAS profs say it is. And we know what kind of "scholarship" Lubiano et al desire. In theory, checks and balances should exist within the system--from the administration, or especially from Trustees. In practice, however, it rarely works that way.

It's worth remembering that the two worst offenders in this case are white males--Nifong and Gottlieb--and that the major hero of the case is an African-American male--Jim Coleman.

As for Obama: I agree, it's hard to see his relevance to this case. I donated to his campaign in 2003, when he was a longshot for the Democratic nomination, and have been an admirer for many years. (I met him briefly, many years ago, when I was at the University of Chicago.)

La dee da, any school with a fight song titled, "Fight Blue Devils" containing lyrics like:

Fight, Fight Blue Devils;Fight for Duke and the Blue and White.March on through,For the touchdown's there for you,Go get 'em---Duke is out to win today,Carolina goodnight;So turn on the steam teamFight Blue Devils fight!

A school with a fight song like that is bound to hire semi-literate professors and attract money from our current upper class.

obama is a lightweight: i strongly suspect that his elevation at the law review was the result of affirmative action--u hv to read his recent book, "the audacity of hope," to appreciate his mediocrity: it's a silly book full of bromides and BS--would anyone care about this guy if he were white? i brought his name into the discussion because he comes from academia--the prestigious U Chicago--he taught const law there--a prestigious assignment, yet if u check his CV he has contributed nothing to the scholarship in this area

blacks i admire outside of athletics and entertainment--boy, that's a racist question, imo

If anything good comes from this saga, perhaps shining the light on these black racists who seek to do harm to others for no other reason than skin color will force them out into the daylight and they will be condemned and shunned just as were KKK members from days gone by.

I'm sure that Lubiano doesn't object to the easy money flowing her way as she warms a chair on Duke's campus.......built by those "meanies".......white males!

Our current climate is most certainly not what the civil rights movement was supposed to have been about.

Time to turn this around. Go for real equality and demand the same standards of performance from blacks as for all others who seek a position.

1. Including Obama is a waste of time as he has nothing to do with anything related to the Gang of 88 or the rape case. Or even Duke and/or Durham for that matter.

2. What blacks have I admired and/or admire?

Frederick Douglas: you *must* read his collected essays. They are on par with the written works of Lincoln.

George Washington Carver: an absolute genius.

Dr. Martin Luther King: His death was a greater tragedy and injury to the American people than the Vietnam War, death of JFK, death of RFK, Bay of Pigs or the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Had he lived he would have guided American blacks into a much better relationship with the rest of America and he could have prevented the ursurpation of his mantle by self-professed "leaders" who seek and offer nothing but corruption.

Thanks for the info, I didn't realize she was hired with tenure. It certainly makes the situation look worse.

Bill,

Duke is a research institution, and holds itself out as such. But I don’t think that means every professor in every department at Duke has to be primarily a researcher. Obviously, the music department should contain a number of professors who are primarily composers and not just musical academics. The art department should probably have its share of actual artists on the faculty, not just art historians. The English or Literature department might contain a handful of fiction writers. The political science department might include a former senator. And if the Business school wants to make a former CEO of a fortune 500 company a professor , I think they’d be well within their rights. And just like I wouldn’t frown on any of the above mentioned appointments, I don’t object to a research university giving tenure to an exceptional teacher with a less than exceptional publishing record. A professor’s academic research record shouldn’t always be the end all and be all of a university’s hiring and tenure determinations – even at a research university. I’d be hesitant to impose strict hiring guidelines on any department just because someone like L slipped through the cracks.

Both of you are academics who are a lot closer to the ground on these issues, so I respect both of your opinions in this discussion immensely. I’m just very apprehensive about applying uniform publishing criteria to all professors in all departments. I can’t imagine that many professors in any department are eager to dole out tenure to hacks that can’t or refuse to publish. It cheapens the value of their own position and makes them look bad. I would think that they’d want the best people they can get. Maybe I’m being naïve, but isn’t there already an invisible hand at work to keep these things in check?

Prof. Johnson, I won't be offended if you delete this comment but I do want to respond to jc @ 11:43.

The reason I eliminated atheletes and entertainers from your consideration is that in my experience, including relatives of mine, white bigots are happy to admire blacks in those fields, as long as the athletes and entertainers don't start getting uppity and doing political things. JIm Brown and Lew Alcindor were greatly admired by folks like my father, until Brown started his activism (late in his football career) and Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabaar. White bigots can admire black entertainers and athletes but can't quite admire Colin Powell, Andrew Young, Leon Higginbotham, Shirley Chisolm or Barbara Jordan.

Your presumption that JC MAY be a bigot/racist simply because he stated an opinion critical of Obama and affirmative action is not only HIGHLY prejudicial...but also virtually identical to the knee-jerk auto-response accusations of racism directed at many of the Duke 3 supporters here.

And the fact that you want names of blacks that he admires??? WHY? Sounds almost as if you've judged him guilty and now want him to prove his innocence.

Dukeparent09 was right on the mark. I don't know if jc is a bigot or not, but many of his posts (not just his question about Obama) sound racist to me. Frankly, I don't care if he is a racist or not, but when his posts (and those of others) include a lot of racist language, even if he thinks he's just being witty, it demeans the whole board. Those who would condemn Dave, Reade and Collin because of their own racism would love to quote one of jc's posts as an example of how racist this board is.

I agree that publishing in journals is NOT always the sign of great scholarship. In my profession, all too often I have seen "top" pieces that consisted of torturing the data until it confessed.

The point, however, is that by any standard of work, I do not think that people like Lubiano operate on a par with the top people at Duke in other fields, like chemistry, engineering, law, and the like. At a place like Duke, you are supposed to bring more to the table than just an ability to teach. Now, I have no idea if Lubiano is a good teacher. The three students who rate her on ratemyprofessors.com say she is very good and very intelligent.

(By the way, here is what one student had to say about KC: Dr. Johnson offers Ivy League caliber classes. He represents the best of what Brooklyn College has to offer. His understanding of history—in my opinion—is unmatchable. His classes are wide, deep and rich in content. He is a role-model, mentor and ultra-cordial.)

There is something else we need to understand, however, and that is the "scholarship" of the race/class/gender studies is extremely subjective, but also is thoroughly politicized. These studies are the creation and the domain of the very hard left on campus, and they are extremely imperialistic.

Now, these are people who would try to destroy the chemistry and physics departments, or at least try to make those subjects so PC as to turn them into fantasy. So, you have to understand that it is very difficult for me to have the same level of respect for someone like Lubiano or any other other members of the Gang of 88, despite their intelligence.

Also, keep in mind as you read Lubiano's stuff is that her GOAL is destruction of all private social institutions, the destruction of human relationships as wel know them, and the destruction of academics itself. The Bolsheviks and the Khmer Rouge both believed that they could do the same and "remake" society. What they did, instead, was to drive their societies toward primitivism and to kill millions of people in the process.

To someone like Lubiano, the lacrosse case is nothing more than a hook by which to gain more power and influence at Duke. Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans are not real people to her. They simply are "symbols" of whiteness that need to be destroyed. Ultimately, that is the biggest reason why I have no use for people like her.

The above should have read "keep comments that could be considered racist out of their posts." We all should do that. Why would we want to give those who have prejudged the lacrosse players more ammunition.

The words racist and bigot have lost meaning. It is obvious that anyone who has an opposing view from blacks is called a racist. This is one of the positives from this case. I hope the guys write a book and make millions.

Quite honestly, Lubiano doesn't worry me. she seems so full of animosity that I doubt many take her seriously. that is why even the statement of the group of 88 also doesn't bother me, as deplorable as it is, I think most normal people see through it immediately.

Fanatics like Lubiano exist on every campus, and are most common in departments like AAS and Gender Studies--those departments which, as Bill said, arose because of activism. Yes, much of their existence can be attributed to out PC climate (again, at every major university) and, from what I can see, the more fanatical they are, the harder it would be to get rid of them. In fact, it is in Duke's interest to let Lubiano et al talk all they want--they will get noticed and hired away, like Baker did.....

1. The inclusion of Obama is off-point, but as an opinion is not racist in any way, shape or form.

2. Nothing I've read by "jc" could be construed as racist. Frankly a lot of accusations of racism are just full of nonsense.

And being critical of today's excessive hyper-sensitivity over race relations is not racism. The entire point of the Civil Rights Movement was to take race out of consideration. The entire point behind today's black victimization silliness is to put it right back in there, but twisted around.

You want racism? Then try and explain why asians need 450+ more points on their SATs than blacks in order to get into the same colleges.

3. A lot of people like to use accusations of racism to shut down debates.

When justice is done and these three innocent men are out of Durham for good, this case will reap HUGE positives.

Never again will blacks be able to extort and yell and whine. Everyone will always from now on reference this case and show black enthusiastic and sweeping support of RACISM and INJUSTICE simply because of skin color.

I think that all of America is finally waking up. These people will have to fend for themselves and stop expecting special treatment.

Few will lend an ear to the uncivilized and racist mindsets as most blacks have revealed in response to this case.

to the person who considers himself an editor: KC made the right decision to focus on the climate that fosters the likes of Wah--don't forget 1 thing: she wants the 3 to go to prison--since we're in a down period, it is absolutely appropriate to discuss affirmative action as it realates to the case, as well as general considerations, imo

i brought up obama only to point out that he also received preferential treatment akin to W's--i think it is a joke that he lectured on const law at U Chicago without portfolio--if that makes me a racist--okey-dokey

What do you think of the current Bama search for a new football coach? I did undergrad at Tennessee and doctorate at Auburn, so I find this interesting. (I ran track at Tennessee, and my teammates had a saying: "Bill sees red when we run Alabama." I did have some of my best performances against the Tide.)

Yes, I know this is not the appropriate place for this question, but seeing War Eagle, I cannot resist. Sorry.

i'm trying to shape a script for a docu on this durham stuff: to create a spine, so to speak

1 thing about this case that i feel is very important is precious's mental health--the stolen car, alcohol and drugs, passing out, problems in the navy, her age when she started to screw up--all these things tell me that she may hv some kind of affective disorder--perhaps bipolar disease, which of course is a devastating burden

can u speak to this, as i think it's 1 of the unmentionables in this trainwreck we call durham

If you meant your definition of racism to be funny, well, I'll grin, but not LOL.

JC is Jim Clyne, I believe, and if I'm wrong, I apologize. War Eagle asked for an example of what I would call racism: Here it is from Mr. Clynes post on the Baum string on this blog:

"i disagree with the posters who argue that the black community wants a payback verdict: sorry boys, i think it's much worse: cognitively deficient populations are easily led and are superstitious--read any criminology textbook for the "explanations" "

In this string I was reacting to JC's bringing Obama into the discussion, which seemed to me to be done only to bash the current Democrats' favorite black man du jour. And JC's comment in the same post as follows:"If blacks want to foster this crap, let them do it at their expense: think about all the worthy pursuits universities could invest money instead of doling out academic welfare to W"

If anyone cares to judge my "PC" quotient, personally I don't think Obama has near enough experience to be on a national ticket. Also, personally I think African American Studies should be sub-departments within a History Department. I feel that way about Women's Studies, too.

On the subject of racism...I feel I have been personally harmed by Nifong's hoax, and by the support he has received from Durham's angry blacks, particularly from "professional angry blacks" like Lubiano.

How? I grew up in a place where being done violence by black criminals was part of living in the city. I've had to work very hard all my life to judge the individual and not the race, because I was conditioned at an early age -- and quite harshly so -- to expect the worst.

In the four years I've lived in Durham, I've told several people that I've observed whites and blacks to get along better here than anywhere else I've lived, north or south. Now that Nifong has essentially set race relations here on fire, I have to admit it: I will be hesitant to do business with blacks, or to hire them. I sincerely didn't feel that way a year ago.

From where I stand, Nifong has poisoned our entire community. And he gets plenty of help from self-serving academitards like Peter Wood and Lubiano. Time and effort may help heal the situation, but the scars will remaian. It's a situation that never had to happen.

To 12:48am Coach K isn't much better. I spoke with him at an event last week. He was just as whimpy as anyone in the Broadhead administration. He was telling me that he is in a hard position bc of UNC around the corner. He was making excuses why he can't speak up for the lacorosse players.

Woo, now, I just sent my last check to Durham, son graduates in May. He did make a great observation, African American classes are so easy and predictable, that everyone loves to take them to fluff their GPA. So free grades are also available over at the AA studies, if you have a strong stomach.

Clownies like Wahneema need a one-way ticket to the Sudan. At least there she can complain without living in the cozy comforts of everything created, invented, and provided by the vey American people she despises.

Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Native Americans, etc. And then there are just Americans. You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.

You Call me "Whiteboy," "Cracker," "Honkey,""Whitey," "Caveman" .. and that's OK. But when I call you, Ni**er, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink ... you call me a racist. You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live? You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi You have the NAACP. You have BET.

If we had WET (White Entertainment Television) . we'd be racists. If we had a White Pride Day .. you would call us racists. If we had White History Month . we'd be racists. If we had any organization for only whites to "advance" OUR lives . we'd be racists. We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that? If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships ... you know we'd be racists. There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US , yet if there were "White colleges" . THAT would be a racist college. In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride you call us racists. You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society . you call him a racist. I am proud. But, you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists?

As a Duke grad I can only watch this person implode her credibility with words she doesn't understand and a position she can't sell. I appreciate the article clarifying the problem and I hope Duke does something about it before it becomes another Ward Churchill. You can't fire these nuts without a fight in court so they might as well get on with it.

JC, you are a confused pup, the radicals don't want, live and let live, they want you to die. You either convert to Islam or you die. I don't know where you get your facts JC, but 99% of the population of Iran are Muslims. How can you negotiate with a person who wants you dead.

5:05,What's your point, jocks don't need A's too? My point is the classes are Bull Shit and everyone on campus knows it. The students don't object to getting a free ride, they're kids. Who's in charge? They should object to BS classes, but every "good" school has them, so I guess that is the justification. A little White guilt to keep the sisters on the plantation singing they're do da songs, never hurt anyone, and the students get some A's. What a great country!

Kemper, you are right, I took some simpleton, electives to keep my GPA up. You just have to sit in class and get A's. What a deal, it gives you more time to concentrate and study your major subject. What a scam.

Bama's current situation is a comedy of errors. At the risk of sounding cruel...it's been fun watching the meltdown! I don't see any resolution in the near future, and everyone they've offered has turned them down.

LOL at "do, da songs", Kemper. A "gut" course once in a while doesn't hurt. Besides it could be that even if the prof is a wacko, some of the reading would be worthwhile. Race relations as a topic is pretty damned important and will continue to be so for quite awhile.

Last note of today, continuing from my last thought. Maybe if one is in Lubiano's class, one would learn through the reading what the history is of "tar and feathering", even if one could not learn it properly from her.

By the way, we had some interesting people at Auburn, but could you imagine what is happening at Duke going on at the Plains? Now, I realize that we were not as elite as Duke, but we definitely were not in Wahneema's World, or even Wonderland!

jc is a troll. Not a clever one or an articulate one ,or even an interesting one. I agree it would be helpful if he would declare himself so he could be easily passed over. But he knows most would do just that. KC needs delete him and spare us from his sophomoric omnipresence.

9:14 praise for kc a-la chuck n.KC is so great a writer that when he takes his books out of the library at Brooklyn College an entire floor closes.When he pushs away from his keyboard he doesn't move; the world moves away from him.

And what most do not understand is that logical people would feel the same way about the woman if she were white, or any other ethnic background. Who would care? It is her actions that are the issue. Nifong made this a race issue from the start.

If these three men were black and the stripper were white......with the same facts and the same total lack of evidence, I would be coming out with the same criticisms I have offered in this case.

Trouble is, racists in Durham CAN'T believe that fact.......or their reason for living would be destroyed.

1:55 here is the true definition of the word racism as found in the Webster's Dictionary.

A belief that race is the primary determinat of human traits and capactiies.

so please stop twisting that word around to fit your sick little world.

2:22 PM

This is just a PC crock. I am old enough to know that the true definition of "racism" is to use the sole criteria of race as a means to oppress another group of people. As far as the PC bilge above, it is no secret in Evolutionary Psychology, "human traits and capacities" do have a racial or genetic determinant. This is no secret and in no way means one is "racist' Unbelievable how low we have sunk that we need new definitions in order to fit an agenda.

Also, JC is not a troll, 9:19pm. The true trolls are the anonymous ones who cannot bear to hear truth and honest discussion. Not to mention plead for censoring. Get a life.

I gag whenever Evolutionary Psychology rears its head. It is a way to justify the status quo of human behavior and to say we can't help the way we are because we are wired that way.

I thought war eagles definition of racism was a bitter sarcasm, not really meant to be take seriously.

Reverse racism undeniably exists in black populations in this country and plays a large role in this hoax case. It is just as silly to deny that as it is to deny that there are any white racists in this country. Progress is not made and those racists views of both sides are not reduced by each race sitting back and saying or thinking that all blacks/whites are prejudiced against all whites/blacks. Nor is progress made by claiming that everyone is prejudiced because evolutionary psychology says human were always that way.

Progress can be made by pointing out and criticizing actions and words of people, particularly those in positions of power or leadership, which evince unfair prejudicial judgments based on race.

Some behaviors and impulses are certainly hard wired, or hormonally induced. Literally, a gag reflex is hard wired and I used it figuratively only since a belief system (even a rejection of evolutionary psychology) is not. Part of what makes a civilized person is controlling base impulses.

The most often cited evolutionary psychology example is looking for roots of women's preferences for browsing while shopping and men's shopping preference being find the object, buy it and bring it home. Supposedly this behavior comes from early man's social structure where females were "gatherers" and males were "hunters". The easiest prick to that bubble is that a lot of men and women don't fit the modern day shopping stereotype. For example, a traditional "man's man" can spend considerable time browsing for things he enjoys, such as in the Home Depot tool department or in the local music and video electronics store.

We're pretty far afield. I'll be happy to read more evolutionary psychology writing, since it's a hot topic these days. But it will take a lot of persuation to convince me that racial prejudice, from the minority or majority side, is a result of evolution. It may be "natural" to prefer intially to associate with another person who looks like me than someone who looks quite different. But I have come to recognize I would be more comfortable in the company of James Coleman than I would of a white tobacco farmer from Alabama.

But I have come to recognize I would be more comfortable in the company of James Coleman than I would of a white tobacco farmer from Alabama.

Sorry D09P, you are wrong and I could go on and on of why that is and would be happy to do so if you like elsewhere. I think it is best to drop this as it is off topic for this thread. I'm not trying to be condescending, though I have researched this quite thoroughly.

On Lubiano's bibliography at blackculturalstudies.org -- From 1991 she proudly served (still serves?) as an editor of "Social Text," the cultural studies journal that published physicist Alan Sokal's famous hoax article in 1996. See Wikipedia on the "Sokal Affair." Sokal exposed the journal as an organ of nonsense and nonsensical jargon.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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"From the Scottsboro Boys to Clarence Gideon, some of the most memorable legal narratives have been tales of the wrongly accused. Now “Until Proven Innocent,” a new book about the false allegations of rape against three Duke lacrosse players, can join these galvanizing cautionary tales . . , Taylor and Johnson have made a gripping contribution to the literature of the wrongly accused. They remind us of the importance of constitutional checks on prosecutorial abuse. And they emphasize the lesson that Duke callously advised its own students to ignore: if you’re unjustly suspected of any crime, immediately call the best lawyer you can afford."--Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times Book Review